"I'm Just a Teenage Dirtbag," Asshole

Teen angst? Not for Daria, who is adjusting attitude, one teenage asshole at a time (and rightfully so!). You go, Daria!

http://valleywag.com/361100/new-york-editors-confuse-tech+blog-readers-with-teenage-girls

Aren't we supposed to be in a recession, assholes? Why are you advocating that teenage girls demand their parents buy them $400 iPhones (and don't get me started on the crappy contracts AT&T/cingular/whatever it's called is offering with their monopoly on them)? I am so glad I am no longer a teenage girl. I don't think I could even begin to keep up with the fact that I would constantly have to text "Where R U?" to my friends, take pictures (with a camera so small keeping track of it is a time drain in itself) for my MySpace/Facebook/Tumblr page, be an expert at Guitar Hero (without it being obvious that I spend all my free time practicing), and manage my small business (what's that? Most teens don't have small business empires to manage? My bad, I was just siding with Hilary Duff's "Team BlackBerry" killer argument).

Maybe Seventeen should spend less time teaching girls about conspicuous consumption and more time inserting random education factoids in their 'zine so we don't have to read articles like this: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/us/27history.html?ref=todayspaper. "Fewer than half of American teenagers who were asked basic history and literature questions in a phone survey knew when the Civil War was fought, and one in four said Columbus sailed to the New World some time after 1750, not in 1492." I realize that inserting Columbus details into the average teen-oriented magazine will not sell ad dollars and help keep the flailing print industry afloat, but I just can't get on board with the fact that the average teenage girl probably knows more facts about the MacBook Air than the suffrage movement that earned them the right to vote.

Seriously, assholes, maybe next time you have a section pimping out the latest technology, insert at least one somewhat educational/informative website into the mix. Or teach your readers how to read a financial report – or any newspaper at all – so they realize that now is not the time to be asking their parents for anything but hybrid cars (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/business/27gas.html?ref=todayspaper).